Connect The Dots – Healing Landscapes – 04.18.18

Show description: Healing Landscapes for Holistic Climate Balance Mark D. Cohen, permaculturalist, wildlife biologist and Organic Standards inspector, discusses creative approaches for stabilizing the climate through holistic management in different landscapes including forests, grass lands, and crop agricultural systems — in conversation with Alison Rose Levy. Part One of this exploration,Climate-Saving Agriculture may be heard at: http://connectthedots.podbean.com/e/connect-the-dots-climate-saving-agriculture-012418/ Download this episode (right click …

Honoring women farmers

As we celebrate National Farmers’ Day, let’s take a moment to honor the women who run about a third of our country’s farms. They’re also often leading the way in developing more resilient practices, farming on smaller pieces of land, incorporating more crop diversity and growing food for their communities. I had the privilege of speaking with four such farmers …

Ann Larkin Hansen – How to Buy Farmland, Even If You Think You Can’t

For those of us who were born to farm but, alas, not born on a farm, the ache to have your own land can be so intense you feel it in your belly. I thought it could never happen for me. But now, after 20 years of farming and 15 years of interviewing farmers, I’m pretty sure that almost anyone …

Colin Todhunter – The Toxic Agriculture Of Monsanto And Big Agribusiness vs Agroecology Rooted In Communities And Locally Owned

Based on the results on his farm in Gujarat, Indian farmer and campaigner Bhaskar Save demonstrated that by using traditional methods, his yields were superior to any farm using chemicals in terms of quantity, nutritional quality, biological diversity, ecological sustainability, water conservation, energy efficiency and economic profitability. Bhaskar Save died in October, but in 2006 he published a now quite …

Jill Richardson – Don’t Let Them Blind You with Their Science

When I first began researching agriculture, I had no idea how organic farming worked. I saw it as a somewhat backward yet non-toxic and desirable way to grow food. Organic farmers didn’t use fertilizer, I figured, so maybe the plants would be smaller. And they didn’t use pesticides, so I’d have to settle for some damage to my food — …

Interview with Lucy Marston, Field Vegetable and CSA Manager at Hawthorne Valley Farm – 10.22.15

Lucy Marston is the Field Vegetable and CSA Manager at Hawthorne Valley Farm – a 400-acre certified biodynamic farm in the Hudson Valley. She grows for a 300 member CSA, on site farm store and 5 weekly farmers markets in NYC. Lucy came to Hawthorne Valley Farm as an apprentice looking to learn how to farm and then moved up to manage their production vegetable operation, which she has been doing for the past 3 seasons. Before coming to production farming she worked in farm-based education in Connecticut and California.

Study: Goats Fed GM Soy Have Altered DNA, Milk, and Offspring

First, the herbicide chemical glyphosate was found in breast milk of mothers around the country. Now, there is a new study showing that the DNA in goats fed transgenic, GM soy feed is altered, and the milk itself is of lower quality, affecting the offspring. Kid goats were studied both in vivo and post mortem, and what the researchers of this study …

World’s Largest Indoor Vertical Farm Breaks Ground in Newark, New Jersey – Lorraine Chow

Newark, New Jersey will soon be home to the largest indoor vertical farm in the world. The city just broke ground on the massive, 69,000-square-foot AeroFarms headquarters that’s capable of producing up to 2 million pounds of vegetables and herbs annually once it’s in full operation. The new $30 million complex dwarfs Japan’s (already impressive) 25,000-square-foot vertical indoor farm, which had been the world’s largest until …

Pope Francis and Saving the Planet One Meal at a Time

Pope Francis and Saving the Planet One Meal at a Time Gary Null & Richard Gale Progressive Radio Network, July 1, 2015   Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si, speaks not only on behalf of ardent environmental and social activists but also for the protectors of animal rights and opponents of the horrendous conditions farm animals face before being slaughtered to …

Are Locavores a Threat to Feeding the Planet Efficiently? By Anita Dancs and Helen Scharber

Food produced on small farms close to where it is consumed—or “local food” for short—accounts for only about 2% of all the food produced in the United States today, but demand for it is growing rapidly. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, sales of food going directly from farmers’ fields to consumer’s kitchens have more than tripled in the …